Back in April of last year I went to Japan and Vancouver with my good friend Gary. The trip involved many great moments like snowboarding in Niseko and Whistler, partying in Tokyo, and discovering new cities in northern Japan.

But my favourite moment from the trip was unexpectedly making friends with an elderly couple.

Travelling to Japan with my buddies was amazing. I’ve solo-tripped many times, and I’d already been to many of the places that we went to, but there’s nothing quite like sharing moments with some of your best buds.

I’d like to wrap this series up with some tips for if you’re thinking of travelling to Japan, as well as some lessons that I learned on my trip.

Sweet home Okinawa baby! We landed in Naha, Okinawa on the 26th and immediately felt the island heat. The temperature in mainland Japan was cool and comfortable, but in Okinawa it was in the high twenties with a humidex of like, 40000%.

We arrived in Hiroshima on the Shinkansen at around noon on Saturday, the 24th. We had a lot of time to kill before checking in at our AirBnB, so we decided to chuck our bags in the train station’s coin lockers and go explore the city.

We arrived in Nara on the afternoon of the 23rd after spending the morning in Kyoto. On the cab ride to our AirBnB we were caught off-guard by the amount of deer. They were seriously friggin’ everywhere! They walked around casually on major streets like they ran the place.

After our little hiccup, Gary and I finally made it to Kyoto and united with the crew at around 9PM. We hadn’t slept in ~24 hours (I am envious of anyone who can sleep on planes) but that didn’t stop us from getting drinks at the nearby izakaya.

Gary and I had a later flight than the rest of the crew, so the original plan was for us to meet up with everyone a few hours later in Osaka. However, we ended up missing our flight to Tokyo for reasons completely beyond our control.